BMTC to test all-electric BYD K9 bus for city use

This is a discussion on BMTC to test all-electric BYD K9 bus for city use within Commercial Vehicles, part of the BHP India category; BMTC has chosen BYD as its partner for electric buses. A new bus is imported from China and trial with ...

BMTC has chosen BYD as its partner for electric buses. A new bus is imported from China and trial with the bus is likely to start in few weeks. Though establishing Hybrid / electric infrastructure is long way to go in India, BMTC has taken a lead in the same.

Yet another first from BMTC! Testing of a all electric bus to commence soon!!

Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation, has bought a K9 Electric bus from BYD buses (China) and plans to start testing the bus from the second week of this month. It is currently stationed at BMTC’s Shantinagar depot and is awaiting RTO registration and approval. It will be tested for a period of three months and depending upon feedback and operational fesiability, decision will be taken to introduce more buses into the existing fleet. A dedicated charging unit will be set up at Kempegowda Bus Station which will need additional 90,000 V of power.

The BYD electric bus or BYD ebus, called K9 in China, is an all-electric bus model manufactured by BYD powered with its self-developed Iron-phosphate battery, allegedly featuring the longest drive range of 250 km(155 miles) on one single charge under urban road conditions.

Battery and powertrain
BYD electric bus is powered-only by its in-house developed Iron-cell batteries. BYD claims no emission, no pollution from its electric buses and the chemical materials contained in the battery can be recycled without any toxins. As for the power system of this pure electric bus, BYD's self-innovated in-wheel motor drive system which realizes the function of in-wheel motor drive and hub reductor. The max power output is 90 kW*2 and the max torque is 550Nm*2. Solar panels fixed on the vehicle were once reported to provide more power to supplement the on-board batteries and they really were included on BYD's demo units but not those that have been running on the road commercially, such as in Shenzhen and Xi'an for instance.

Safety
The bus is equipped with the following items to ensure passengers' comfort and safety:
Unitary construction body
4-wheel disc brake
ABS+ASR
one-step easy-pass with special footplates for wheelchair access
non-step inside

Official specifications
BYD's official specs publication on its electric bus includes:
Electric power consumption: less than 100kWh/60mins
Acceleration: 0–50 km/h in 20s
Top speed: 96 km/h
Normal charge: 6h for full charge
Fast charge: 3h for full charge
Or overnight charging: 60 kW Max.power to fully charge the bus within 5h
Range: 155 miles (249 km), 186 miles (299 km) according to some reports
Length*Width*Height: 12,000mm*2,550mm*3,200mm
Standard seats: 31+1 (31 for passengers and 1 for driver)
Weight: 18,000 kg
Clearance between one-step entry and ground: 360mm

BMTC has chosen BYD as its partner for electric buses. A new bus is imported from China and trial with the bus is likely to start in few weeks. Though establishing Hybrid / electric infrastructure is long way to go in India, BMTC has taken a lead in the same.Attachment 1174383

They do already have presence in India or is imported straight from China?
Asking since the bus has a Pune temporary registration on its windshield.

Let us hope that this initiative really takes off. Bangalore will surely start breathing easy. I wonder when we will start getting practical and affordable cars in the electric version. I had recently driven the Nissan Leaf in the USA and must say was absolutely impressed by it. Hopefully Nissan will introduce it into India also!

Everything will be fine till BESCOM has the power in the powergrid. During summer it seems few of the areas in bangalore are in dark due to powercuts and hence I am pretty doubtful in the feasibility of this project by using a critical common resource.

LOL 90000 Volts
The charger for this bus is 480V 3 phase charger.
So no need to setup your own personal power station.
Input power is around 80KW. This is the power consumed by an apartment building with around 20 flats.
So all you need is a small transformer, and you have a bus charging station.
If you are running a fleet of 20 buses, all you need is a transformer, within a 20ftX10ft area, which will be your substation with 20 chargers, one for each bus.

The 250KM range means, it will probably do 1 roundtrip in the city every day (8 hours or so max), which is not bad

At 1.2KWh/km this means around 7rs/km running cost if you take industrial rates of electricity.

A diesel bus in comparison does 3kms/liter of diesel in city cycle.
At 60rs/liter this means 20rs/km

so the running cost is 1/3 or 1/2 if you take worst case scenario.

So lets say a normal bus is 14L inr

This is about 10X of that

So if you save 12rs/km
to save 100L rupees you have to do 10L kms

This is like 10 years of service.
Unless, electricity cost comes down, this is going to be expensive.

^^ Absolutely. Unless the power is produced from Hydroelectric or Wind or such renewable sources. Since the majority of power is from thermal energy, I dont see anything 'Green' except that we may not have them smoking out our vehicle like the Marcopolo does

Our power sources must turn non polluting and renewable ones resource based and only then do these buses or electric anything will be cost effective or non polluting.

Not sure how much energy is lost in the transformation of the energy from one form to another. Using a diesel bus may be more efficient than using the diesel to run a generator and charging an electric bus from the electricity generated from the generator. Guess thats similar to what is happening currently